S14/ DIGITAL INNOVATION SHOWCASE
We were delighted to be invited by the Resource Alliance and Salesforce.org to host a showcase on digital innovation in the sector. Better still they allowed us to record it so we could share it with you. We hear examples from Refuge, RNID, British Heart Foundation and Brain Tumour Research - all confirmed BDIDs (Big Deals In Digital).
Michael – How RNID committed to becoming a digital-first organisation (from 12:30)
Anna - How digital has helped Refuge have more impact (from 24:07)
Athar – Using digital to support beneficiaries and managing change in one of the world’s best-known charity brands (from 33:51)
Rachael – Success in digital fundraising through Facebook challenges at Brain Tumour Research (from 45:10)
Many thanks to our hosts and guests for their presentations, you can find a transcript of the episode below.
(This is our automated first draft, we’ll be working through this to replace the typos.)
So today, we're presented by The Resource Alliance in partnership with Salesforce.org. And I just like to introduce myself, so I'm Kenneth Foreman, I'm actually the co-host of a podcast called Do More Good. I'm also joined by my colleague, James, who will introduce himself in the in a moment. But the podcast is all about interviewing people from across the social good spectrum. So we've interviewed CEOs, leaders, charity founders, and quite often digital innovation has come up as we've spoken to those people. So we were really pleased to be welcomed to host today's session. And hopefully, we can do a good job. But just to say you won't be hearing from us, we've got some fantastic expert panellists who will be sharing the information with you. So as I say, charities have really had to build on digital platforms over the last 18 to 20 months, we've seen a creative innovation right across the spectrum, from virtual events through to online compelling online kind of fundraising experiences. And we have some fantastic examples from charities that we will share with you today. And these examples of charities that have charities and individuals that have taken an innovative approach over the last 20 months to really bring something to their beneficiaries in their organisations, that has really changed the game. So hopefully, there'll be lots that you can take away into your organisation. And really, we want you to leave after this session having some of those tips. So we'll make sure that the speakers are sharing their tips as they go through when they finished speaking. And yeah, hopefully, there'll be lots that you can apply to your day jobs when you return to them probably straightaway after this session. So as I say, I've introduced myself I'm kind of forming in my day job is, I work at London Marathon events as the head of charities. So I'm very privileged to be able to work with an two and a half 1000 charities that we work with the London Marathon. And obviously, like many not for profits and charities over the past year, we've had to innovate around digital. So looking forward to seeing if I can take anything from today's conversation at this point, I'm just going to pass you over to my co host on the do more good podcast, which is James Wright. Hi, James.
I can as I was quite enjoying that was quite enjoying just listening to you. But yes, as you say, We're gonna pass over to the to the experts, but I am Head of Public fundraising at SU Ryder my day job, where we are always trying to innovate and drive digital, we've seen a real transformation over this past two years. In that area. I oversee things like IG lottery and events, areas that have been transformed by by digital or at least have the potential to be transformed by digital, particularly particularly recently. And yet, as you say, over the last three years, I have been the glamorous assistant to you on the do more good podcast. This is quite fun for us. We don't usually do video, we're very much kind of faces faces for audio. But just to kick us off then Kenneth, a question for you. How are you around digital bit of a digital native? Do you embrace it? In your day to day life? What have you seen out there that you've appreciated over the past couple of years? Oh,
that's a big question. I didn't know you're gonna hit with that curveball. I think you know, I think as I've touched on already, the last 20 months, I've seen a lot of disruption. But I think one of the highlights for me, particularly working in mass events, and fundraising is seeing how charities have embraced Facebook, fundraising and virtual events. And I know one of our speakers is going to talk a little bit more on that later today. But I think some of the results that we've seen from there have just been huge, significant, I mean, beyond the wildest dreams of some of the individuals I've spoken to. So I think in terms of fundraising, that's certainly one of the innovative areas that whilst it's not new, over the last 20 months, it's existed for a few years, we've seen some huge success stories. So I think that's one I'm looking forward to hearing more about. James, what about you in your kind of day to day life or day to day role at sea rider?
Yeah, we've definitely we've definitely embraced that more whether it's being led by supporters or whether it's us kind of pushing in that direction. But the the switch to digital has been quite profound over the past 18 months, sort of things like appeals and campaigns, we've seen massive shifts to people donating online and through through kind of more digital prompts, if you like that we've been we've been running I love the kind of scale and personalization that we can bring to it. We've been able to do so much more on that front. We're heavily investing in that area as I'm sure everybody everybody is and then like you Touch on really kind of virtual events Facebook fundraising, we've really grown a virtual event that Sue Ryder that's that's become a massive part of our events, sports and challenge portfolio. And then just last week, I was I was a different presentation around gaming and streaming again, not new thing, but just, you know, embracing and mind we're talking about how they've done some amazing work with that over the over the past year, more child has been doing that for years. And then, when we were preparing for this, the thing that I like, every time we talk about digital, I constantly go back to their Burger King example of how they took something physical in that they sponsored Stevenage Town Football Club, and the pure colour classic brand marketing approach of that, but they did that in order to get into the game, FIFA, and then use that as a digital campaign and activated through that and encouraged people to share clips from the game. But using something quite physical to get into a game, it's just, you know, turns things on its head from how things would normally have worked.
Yeah, and if you haven't seen that case, study, have a look. So the Burger King sponsorship of Stevenage was just a great example of how thinking differently around digital marketing and again, we'll we've got some speakers that will talk a little bit more about how their organisations have have leveraged the the opportunities by through digital marketing to, to know you know, push their campaigning message alongside their face, their fundraising message. So hopefully there'll be lots of interesting things. But look, we've gone on too long. Just a couple of housekeeping rules. If anyone wants to pose a question, please do put it in the chat. We'll be coming to questions at the end with with all of our panellists. The format of today is we're going to hear from four absolutely exceptional panellists who have all got really interesting and slightly different slant on innovation around digital over the past 20 months. So what we're going to do is give each of those opportunity to talk. We'll then have a couple of questions from James, James and I. And we'll go through all four of our panellists. And then we'll have a time at the end for questions from the audience. So yeah, let's crack on. Without further ado, I'm going to introduce to our panellists who are going to talk and introduce themselves. And then they're going to ask answer a question about what innovation means to them. So let me just spotlight them. And we'll add them in here. So there's Rachel and one second. There's Anna, and thought, and Michael, in any major host, I'm gonna add you to the spotlight. There we are. Okay, perfect. So I'm just going to hand over now to Anna, would you like to introduce yourself? Yep.
Hi, everyone. I'm Anna checkout, and I'm the Digital manager at refuge. So that national domestic abuse charity.
Thanks. And question, what does what does innovation mean to you?
Big Questions. I think for me, and I think what we've learned at refuge over the last couple of years is about trying and testing new things, of seeing what works and trying to and being bold and not being scared of of something thinking that it may not work because you don't know until you try it.
Yeah, amazing. Okay, and over to I thought,
guys, so I'm Atha I'm head of social and digital activation at the British Heart Foundation. So that means I'm kind of responsible for social media, digital marketing, and email. I've been in the sector for a while. So then six years of the BHF for that. I was a social media manager AGK. And before that was digital manager, the British down foundation. So quite a lot of variety, different, all different sizes of charity. Yeah, really being part of sector.
And with that experience, as I'm sure innovation, working in digital has been part of your role or remit for multiple different roles that you've had, what did it mean to you in terms of innovation?
Yeah, I think innovation is a word that gets thrown around a lot. And I think it's really, it's relative, that for every organisation, I think the expectation that big charities are more innovative, I think is just, you know, it's not necessarily true at all innovation is for one organisation may not be for another. And it's not always about, you know, innovation isn't just about new products. It's about new ways of working. It's about it's not just about jumping on new channels, it's about connecting channels to the correct audience. And I think the most important thing about innovation is what it isn't. And it isn't about being first.
Yeah, good point. So yeah, that so that gives you the go ahead to just steal and beg. borrow any of the ideas that you hear today. You don't need to be first just go for it. If it means you can raise more money or have more impact as an organisation Feel free. Rachel will come over to you. You want to introduce yourself.
Hi, everyone. I'm Rachel White. I'm the Digital brain tumour research I've worked for the charity for about three years. And prior to that I worked for retail businesses and corporate doing their video, video production, and digital marketing. So I kind of just shift in sector because I wanted to make a difference, and I'm really enjoying working in the charity sector. So yeah, that's mean,
brilliant. And what about innovation view? Rachel? What what does that look like? Or what does it mean to you?
Um, I think for me, it's all about thinking outside the box. So you know, there's challenges or you just think there's a better way to do something. And that's essentially what innovation means to me. And I think it's all about risk taking, you know, you've it's one thing to think of an idea and innovation, it's another to kind of execute it. And, and I think part of that is not being scared to, you know, some will be successes, I think, as Anna said, but even if it wasn't me expectations, you still learn a lot from that. Yeah,
no, it's a good point, you can certainly learn a lot. And Michael, last but not least, we just come over to you. Yeah, hi,
everyone. So I'm Michael concern. I'm Associate Director for digital and Innovation at RFID. And it's our mission as a charity to make life fully inclusive for deaf people, and those who have hearing loss and tinnitus. So innovation to me, obviously, my job title, so that's interesting. But it's actually a 16th century word that derives from Latin, to verbs in Latin, to renew and to make new. And that became the word innovate. So I think, for innovation, it's been around a really long time, much longer than we actually think. And often, it's really simple stuff. And it's not as big and scary as perhaps digital people like to make out
nice and great to have someone with us who's done their homework and actually come along with a quote and a definition. So we like that, Michael, thank you very much. James, do you want to hand over to you at the moment, if you want to then crack on with just a few more housekeeping? And then we'll get on with the sessions?
Yeah, no, sort of some excellent points. They're not always about being first steal other people's ideas, innovation, you know, he's often taking other people's ideas and doing it better and improving on it. And talking No, and Rachel both talking about being bold and going for stuff, give it go see if it works. We certainly have done that through the show, haven't we? So give that a try. And yeah, as you say, like the points go to Michael, we did his homework, pulling addiction pulling the dictionary out there. I was worried about him because he went last as well. Because, you know, other people might have said things he was hoping to. Yeah, I guess, housekeeping stuff. Just I think people are using the chat. But but continue to do that and throw some questions in there that we will ask, as we come towards the end of the session. Should we move into some of the presentations? Yes. Yeah, I
think we will. I think we've got Michael, who's going to go up first about kind of his the commitment, I guess, and I'm sure Michael will talk tell us more about becoming a digital first organisation. So it doesn't have any slides. But Michael, over to you.
Alright, and thank you. So I'm going to talk about RFID. And our journey. And our descent innovation is really simple, and in ways is, we've actually ended up doing a whole lot of it over the last few months. So before the pandemic, we were perhaps not like in the best place as a charity. So in terms of our brand awareness, we used to call action on hearing loss. And our brand awareness has reached a low of 22%. We've been action on hearing loss for a decade, we just been through a financial recovery as a charity. And we didn't really have the clarity and have the direction that we wanted to take in terms of our services and our strategy that we perhaps do today. So we were in a little bit of a tricky situation, I suppose before the pandemic and we were working through that. We were kind of already on this path anyway. And then the pandemic came along and sort of accelerated everything that we wanted to do more. So as we kind of close 2021 We are, I think on so many levels, a completely different organisation. To me, having worked here now for over two years, it feels like I'm kind of working in the sort of shell of 110 year old charity, but it's like a new company that's springing out of it. So that's really, really exciting. And, you know, that's kind of that change is sort of permeating through everything we do, and crucially how we do it. So we like everybody else when fully remote, and we decided to not bother going back to an office. In fact, we sold our office and we've we've fully enjoyed raced remote ways of working, and the cultural change that's needed to accommodate that. So we're on a bit of a mission to become digital first as a charity and, and the best charity to work for. So we've gone completely flexible with our ways of working, we've removed our core working hours. So people can choose how and when they work for us. And that's, that's really important. And already, we're seeing great success from that, because we've been able to recruit top talent from all over the country. Whereas when I first started, I could only hire people from London and that area. So that's been a really big kind of cultural change, we have in the middle of the pandemic launched a new digital service, which includes an online hearing check, which allows people to check their hearing within three minutes. It's private, confidential, you can do it from any device in your own home, wherever you are. And we were building a whole load of new products to kind of really push what we want to do digitally and reach more people. In that way. We're also about to design a new flagship in person service, which will help people with their hearing aids to maintain them and so on. And as a result of all of this, that's now informing what we do with our fundraising. So our fundraising was quite traditional, I guess before. But we're now kind of moving into the space of becoming much more cost LED. So we're really thinking about how can we build fundraising journeys into our digital service, when people come into our in person service, and really kind of linking those those things much more closer together than we would done before. Now all that sounds great. But we've also had to take really difficult decisions as a charity as well. And it's not been the easiest of times on that level, we've we've had to take the decision to retire a number of services. And we'll be winding down some of our commission services, as contracts come to an end. And we've divested all of our care and support services, which was a huge undertaking. And something we didn't do lightly considering our first care home opened, I think in the 1930s. So we've we've really kind of changed the whole structure of, of this organisation, we've we've gone through a major restructure as well on top of that, and all that's happened in the middle of the pandemic. And so now as we kind of go forward, we're committing ourselves to becoming digital first in everything we do. So that's through our service delivery, the way we raise money, and, and our culture as well. So I think some of the kind of ways in which we've got to where we are today, one was a rebrand back to Aaron ID, which we could have postponed, we could have said, actually, the COVID-19 is not the best time to do it. But actually, upon reflection, we felt there was no better time to do it, people needed more than ever. And actually, people loved our historic name of our Nid. So we did that. And already that's that's had a huge impact in terms of more awareness of what we do as a charity. We've introduced a lot of really kind of basic things that are the kind of foundations for being more digital first. So that's introducing user research. So we researched with 3000 people to help build our new digital first strategy. And we regularly test with users, we can we count now, we've introduced the principles of service design and product management, which the charity just didn't do before. And that's really giving us a much more strategic approach to the way we develop our services and products. We've introduced agile matrix styles of working. So we weren't, we were very, very siloed before. And we've really kind of come in, flipped the tables and smashed all that apart. And that's been really exciting because now people are working with people that they hadn't, didn't even know before. Who used to sit in different offices. So now we've levelled that playing field, people are able to collaborate across different capability teams. And they're all working to support our new for new programmes around health, inclusion, research and employment. And those are going to be the four programmes that really kind of drive us forward. And then I think the final thing I would say are in terms of how we've done it, it's around kind of our culture and the way we're working. So now we're working much more open and much more transparent. We're showing much more transparent leadership. We have a public roadmap for our digital service. You can go to Aaron id.org, UK forward slash roadmap. Everybody can see it, and you can see what we're working on next. And that's been really interesting for people who want to come and work for us because they can get a really good view of What exactly they'll be getting involved with. And we try to push that way of thinking through everything we're doing now, we regularly blog about our work, and we're sharing our insights. And I suppose that's why I'm here today, you know, because we're really keen to work in the open. And I think that's when you start to really kind of reap the real benefits. And so I suppose if I was going to kind of give you some takeaways from the journey that we've been on, one is, is digital transformation is not just about what you do, but it's about how you do it. And by changing our culture, we've been able to do things differently. I would also say that kind of culture organisational culture is is really a game changer if you can get that right. So just be as open as possible, stay transparent, and adopt flexible, flexible approaches, because it's better for your work force, it's better for the charity, it's better for all the people that you're helping. And, and finally, just really kind of focusing on how you deliver value. Because that's the reason we can do this at the end of the day. So yeah, it's been a really exciting couple of years for us. And in a way, like we've gone through all of that, but now I feel like we're only just starting out on the journey. So, yeah, more more to come. I'm sure.
No, amazing. I mean, Michael, it sounds like we could probably speak to you for the full hour about all of the changes that you've gone through. And I can see this quite a few questions coming in. Because it sounds like you've had huge change over the past year or 18 months. The question that comes out of that, and I think it's a question that was referenced below was just about that cultural point you made, you know, as 110 year old an organisation going fully remote removing the officers introducing all of these new working practices, how have you maintained? Or is there anything that you can tell us about how you've maintained the culture of the organisation during that time?
Yeah, I think remote working, obviously, that's something we're embracing full time right now. And that's, that's challenging in itself, like we can all share that challenge. But we've committed as a charity to getting all our people together four times a year, will will all come together. And we did that recently, a couple of weeks ago. And it was so nice to just get everybody back in the room again. So whilst I'm probably one of the biggest advocates on this call, for, for remote working, that there's huge benefits in getting people together. But 95% of our time, we can't do that we have to be remote. That's the decision we've taken. And so we're just finding new ways to collaborate with each other. And to give more people a say in what we do. So, you know, I think it's embracing collaboration tools. We've been experimenting with working asynchronously. So kind of thinking about ways in which people can feedback and create things in their own time. And then come together or kind of when it's appropriate. But yeah, I think it's, it's, it's about making sure you don't just take like old office based practices into a remote environment. Because whilst we sort of muddle through in the pandemic, that's not going to cut it in the future. If we're going to be fully remote, we've got to change our culture. So yeah, I think it's just kind of being really kind of open to embracing fresh ways of working and opening up ideas to people, running retrospectives asking people, you know, how could we do things differently? That thing you liked? Okay, let's do more of that. And yeah, just kind of opening up to people. Yeah. Great,
great. I've got some questions for you about kind of the pressure of coming in, and then two years and two years ago, and then suddenly, we've been hit by pandemic and you're thrown into the limelight. So maybe we will, we will come back. To give you a second to think about those. We will come back to that. And there's some more questions there. Maybe move to Anna, how have things been at refuge for you for the past year in
a bit? Been a bit mad, to be honest. It's yeah, so I mean, cases of domestic abuse skyrocketed, as you can imagine, during pandemic, and then we had to respond to that pretty quickly. So like, one of the things was, we were planning to a live chat service. We're planning to do it several months after we actually launched it, because we were like, right, we just need to get this out now. Because we need to be able to, you know, have like, have multiple ways for people to get in touch with us at this really critical time. And yeah, all about fundraising all about like campaign work, everything went on online. And we had actually just begun to introduce our like our disengagement strategy, which I'm going to talk through in a second. And luckily, we'd already started that work because I think if we hadn't we would have been caught off guard that we'd actually implemented some about new ways of working already. So as I share my
Yeah, so And there's going to talk a little bit more about how she's been using digital over the last two years, as she said, to kind of bring together well, fundraising and campaigning and actually a bit more of a joined up approach, which I think is really innovative and interesting. So yeah, go ahead.
Okay. So you can see that I'm going to be looking at, I've got two screens, so sorry, by the way now. Okay, so then I'm going to what did you innovation at refuge? This is our mission, I guess. And as part of our kind of digital engagement product, we want to harness the power and energy of the feminist movement, and essentially create an online movement of supporters who will engage with the charity in different ways. So that means campaigners, fundraisers monthly givers, they're all supporters. We don't work in a in a siloed way a refuge. So whilst I am the digital manager, and I sit with them comms team, I work very closely with fundraising colleagues. And where, you know, this is a kind of this joint project between us and fundraising. We have no joint objectives. And we're actually moving, hopefully, towards a kind of joint budget, which is really exciting. So all of these ways of working are just much more aligned. And we try to limit segmentation and are impossible to journey, because people will engage with refuge in different ways at different points. And so we'll do some segmentation, but not a huge amount. So, just to talk about individual giving refuge. So that's, you know, one of donations and regular giving. We on boarded with engaging networks, but two years ago, we redid all of our donate pages, the ones before were completely useless. We invested in Facebook ads, primarily for kind of one off donations, and like parcels and gifts and those kinds of things. We implemented a, a new email support, donate, I really should say email support, surely, because when I joined at refuge, we had a quarterly newsletter. So we sacked that and got we used engagement works and our emails had regular day asks, We AB test everything, everything that we do, which I think is one of my definitely top top tips, test, test test and look at what your results show you as well. So this is just a snapshot of online income, you can see where in March 2020, we, we really, it really shot up so December 2019, that was the first time we'd ever done a sort of like proper kind of Christmas appeal. Using like online ads and things like that, and then we went lockdown happened, we invested a lot more in those. And we decided to spend while the return was gonna was high. We also have Mother's Day and International Women's Day, which were very big events in the calendar for refuge. We then move into it goes a bit mad April or May, and we pivoted to kind of COVID Emergency appeal. Because we needed to fund you know, people need to fund our refuges and to keep those open and to support our helpline staff. And then we Christmas in 2020 repeated the same thing that we've done the year before, but saw much, much bigger results. We had more supporters and more like kind of streamlined ways of working at that point. So that's just that's to summarise that income. Basically, yeah, from 17 point 1 million to 34 point 5 million. So this was, this was a huge deal for us. And now, also fundraising accounts for 50% of the organization's income, whereas before it was much more like development contracts. It's those kind of things. So we've really pivoted, and yeah, our fundraising team and the kind of resources has grown as a result. Just we'll quickly touch on community and events. So I know that someone's gonna speak more and more detail about virtual events, but we started doing these. So we have like, Facebook groups for each of the challenges that we do. And we also held a virtual festival for International Women's Day, which we're going to do next year and we're going to keep virtual because we found it much better than you know, we were able to get people from all over the country, in fact, other countries. So yeah, much greater variety. These things may look familiar to people that we've started doing challenges that like 100 squats a day for 30 days, which is a lot of squats, I can tell you as someone who tried to take part.
And we've got these Facebook groups, this is an example where people can interact with each other. And it's that they're the loveliest groups, if we ever get like, and we do sometimes get trolled on social media, by men's rights activists, these are the places that go to like 80, to make myself feel better, because they're just full of fundraisers supporting each other and sharing their successes. And, yeah, it's very lovely. They've also raised a lot of money. So you can see that we started March 2020, with 100, squats, and then right through to February 2021, but we had run 100 miles. Which Yeah, but the return was, was incredibly high, and continues to be. But digital engagement isn't just financial. We integrate campaigning and fundraising. So we ran a campaign last year called The Naked threat, which was a campaign to make threats to share intimate images illegal. So that's basically making threats to revenge porn, like that illegal, we won, which was amazing. And part of that was, obviously there was the campaign kind of policy advocacy element, but there was also, you know, we brought in a lot of supporters. So those 30k supporters, half of that half of those opted in, we received one and a half k in donations, and we got 220 direct debits. So this is people who are like, you know, long term income for us. And in total, about 45,000 pounds, we got as part of that campaign, which is incredible, because we weren't expecting to raise any money. We spent 11k is total on kind of mainly Facebook ads for the campaign. So the return on adspend was really good. And the return on investment is great. And and I think it just shows that people kind of engage with a charity in different ways, and not to silo them. And so we have things with daisy chain. So but all of our signups if it's 100, if it's a campaign, we always ask someone to do something else at the point of signing up. So we always ask them, always have a donate, ask share us, or both. Because, as you know, as long as it's in a way that's kind of user friendly and easy for people to do, we found that people will do it. And that should be scattered over asking people. And that is the end of my slides. So I'm going to stop sharing now.
Thank you, Anna. That's amazing. The numbers that you raised last year, incredible increase, I think a few charities will have seen that. But it was really started for you. That was that was great see. And 220 direct debits for a campaign, when expected to raise any income from that's quite a nice phrase wasn't.
I mean, yeah, it was not expecting it at all. We didn't even set any targets for fundraising. We're just like, let's either donate ask on and see what happens.
Well, my question really for you is, you mentioned how you were already working on this there was there were already projects going on to maybe shift more towards digital first approach, a kind of did you massively feel a load of pressure suddenly to accelerate those plans? Were they already in place? Like you talked there about how testing should all? I mean, obviously, we all know this, but then we don't include testing and everything that we do have to speak on behalf of everybody as much as we should do. And we're their barriers to getting that in place was it was it was that stuff that you were already doing the kind of daisy chain stuff that you mentioned around, including non financial assets? Or perhaps the reverse, including financial aspects? Is that all stuff you had planned? And was that already coming in? Or was that stuff that you saw the opportunity last year, I thought, bang, bang, bang, get all of my strategy in there.
I'd obviously it was planned, but it definitely wasn't I think we had a vision, like we had ideas, show engagement work what we wanted to do. But we had no idea what was about to what was about to hit us and support that we were about to get and, you know, we basically just tried to harness that as much as possible. And I think, I mean, not luckily because it was a horrendous situation. But we we got a lot of kind of media coverage and a lot of like, attention during the kind of definitely during the peak of the pandemic. And, you know, we were able to, like harness that and raise loads of money for the people that use our services. So that that was great. And, but I think that basically as soon as we started kind of doing this and investing slowly at the beginning and seeing these really good results, then we were able to use that to kind of say Right, well we need to we need to do this more. And it was it was a bit of a journey getting to that point. The digital engagement stuff kind of work was started before I before I joined. And it took a while to get people on board. And Christmas 2019 was really the first kind of example of that. So yeah, it does take a little while.
Yeah, incredible results, we'll move swiftly on to a thought of the BHF one of the biggest and most well respected charities out there. I thought you've had some challenges over the last year changing change in one of the world's biggest charities. You want to talk to us a little bit more about that? Yeah,
sure. So, as you sort of pointed out, yes, the VHF is a big chip, and we turn slowly. And I think that's always been the case, but the pandemic kind of forced us to rethink that. And I think, because our beneficiaries were quite, quite a lot of them were in those high risk groups and had, you know, very pressing specific concerns and questions that needed to be asked that weren't necessarily part of the wider communications coming from the NHS, you know, everything was, there was a lot of information out there. And for them to get what was relevant to them is people living with heart and circulatory diseases, we became very much go to point. So initially, our pandemic response was actually to dial down fundraising, and to move towards patient first comms, which basically means that everything that wasn't fundraising was kind of de prioritised. And all of our digital focus went into surfacing that healthcare information, creating Coronavirus, higher, making sure that all of our information was getting out there, which was, you know, absolutely the right thing to do. The traffic that we saw to our website, absolutely rocketed. We started using our digital marketing budget, but purely for informational resources for a period of time, it was really rewarding. And, you know, it felt very much like the right thing to do. I think on the flip side of that, is that once, once that one is cause we went into appeal mode, and we went we did an above the line appeal. It was okay. But I think perhaps we were could we could have been a little bit quicker off the mark. But again, that's the I think that's one of the interesting things about that time is, you know, balancing what your beneficiaries need in that time against, you know, what it is you have to offer. So I think the refugee example is incredible in that their beneficiaries were in a very different situation required absolute urgent support, as did all of us, I guess,
one of the other things that we did was that we, in order to try and be a little bit quick off the mark, we repurpose some of our existing products. So some some, we, we had walking products in the past that were almost in that mass packed model, and then we tried to shift them over to be more of a self serve model. So rather than having to start a certain day, and having a certain amount of time, it's essentially just almost a switch over to community fundraising. Again, you know, is a good idea. And it didn't mean we had like the infrastructure in place, but I'm not sure it really achieved the standout, that that we would want. And then there were other situations wherein, you know, there was, there was that very much a trend for online quizzes, some charities, got in there, really early, got really great command, Scott Stevens tried to house all of this. We tried to get involved in that. And we had a really, we had a really great proposition. We did a football quiz. Chris Stark was the host, David Seaman, and then Hodel been reading out of questions. Really nice, again, is his timing I think we've got we've perhaps got the timing a bit wrong route to market wasn't, wasn't, wasn't quite as clearly established. And it could have been, well, zero regrets for any of them. They were already good products. They were already already good learning experiences. And it was it was certainly worthwhile, especially because people, ambassadors, your supporters, everybody wants to mobilise that was the sort of that was what was going on across across the country, you know, from street WhatsApp groups to volunteering for the NHS for all of them. So I think it's getting that getting that right is tapping with the VHF people such a wide board base, trying to find something that can get that lift up wasn't wasn't, it's not easy for anyone but wasn't easy. But then just like everyone else, Facebook challenges came along. They did great for us. And I think the important thing that I want everyone to think about when it comes to Facebook is yeah, the challenge model is great. Now we can all we all know the market saturated because we're all bombarded with with that doesn't mean step away from it. But it does. I would say you know, everyone should be prepared to pivot but how can you use that Facebook model? For other products for other audiences, we'll all keep milking it until it ceases to be, you know, to give us that that return I'm sure we're all seeing similarly great ROI figures on that. But, you know, think long game, keep, keep doing them. But think think about what's next. Because those people that got in there first on Facebook challenges, have been able to really iterate on that and build and build and some of still playing catch up. And then I think one of the other areas where I would sort of shine a bit of a light on this community fundraising we've, we've, we've been able to we've had some really great community fundraising stories and individuals that come out of that we had a lady called Joan Willett, and she basically, you know, inspired by Captain Tom, she gave herself a similar challenge, walking up and down the steps in front of her home, she was 104, she absolutely smashed it. She was great, we got a lot of media for her. It's very inspiring story drove a lot of other community fundraisers to get involved. And we were able to have, you know, one of one of the benefits of being such as having such high brand recognition. And being a big charities, we do get, we were quite lucky in some of the opportunities that fall our fall into our lap. So activity circus, they were having difficulty selling advertising as footfall in central London was so low, we were able to get a two hour takeover or the board's there. And we use that to thank Joan. And so we used footage that we had of flyovers. It was amazing. And then she didn't know anything about it. And obviously, she couldn't be there. So we were like live streaming to enter into hub care, home filming, no response. Great. And again, we've got more media off the back of it, it was a lovely thing to she was, she's a great, you know, she was a lovely, lovely person, and really a real personality and a real really strong character. So that was, that was great. And I think that's it community fundraising, is something that chugs along in the background, but actually, it's, it's an activation point for you guys.
And which kind of leads me on to my three things to take away is one of them. So one thing is not all trends, if you don't think that every trend is an opportunity for you look at your user base in your existing products, and just make those considered choices about what to test. The idea of testing everything, yes, out there. But I think in your heart and our hearts of hearts as product owners, we kind of sometimes it's fine to listen to your gut feel and not just give it a go. Sometimes you can maybe you can't, maybe you've got the resource, but I don't think everyone should feel pressured to give everything ago. And everything you do do, make sure it's scalable. If something is going well be ready to throw the kitchen sink at it goes bigger as you can, in that moment, don't think our next time we activate it will go bigger be able to cope bigger on each and every activation, it's just it's you got you got to do so. And it shouldn't be difficult to build scalability into into a lot of these products that we're using, especially when we're digital. First, it's not like you've run out of places on a 10k think think big on everything. And, you know, going back to what I'm saying before, you don't have to focus on growing your audience, especially the time like the pandemic, when everyone is everyone's doing everything they can for themselves for their jobs and for the charities that they support. So really focus on activating your existing audience, they are your amplifier, if you've got a new idea you want to take to market, take it to market through them. Let them be that sort of testbed. And those sort of advocates your support as advocates as well as, as well as supporters. So really, really make sure you're leveraging that then them first and foremost.
Brilliant. Thank you. Yeah,
it's great to hear how you guys focus firstly, on your beneficiaries when the pandemic hit and kind of really looked after them. I guess my question for that and we've spoken a lot about looking backwards and looking at what happened during the pandemic and how we as organisations pivoted tried new things. I thought for you and your team, what have you learned from the past year in terms of how you work that you think will become part of how you work in the future, if anything,
the organisation like many other charities restructured during pandemic so actually, that restructure reflected a built in a lot of other ways of working that we did so planning and prioritisation became a team within the organisation that we didn't necessarily have in that format before The innovation of products, those those teams kind of came closer together. We combine marketing and fundraising, which I know lots of other organisations have done. So I'm not necessarily saying that was a direct impact of the pandemic, but we were able to sort of take some of the learnings from those first few months, and almost test those ways of working, I think, you know, silos came down on a massive scale, we were all working from home. So that again, just means that you have those opportunities. One of the one of the big changes is, the number of people that attend a meeting isn't limited by the size of your meeting rooms. And that might sound dumb, but that makes a massive difference when you don't have to be selective about who's in the room. And it means that you've got a better diversity of voices. So it's things it's things like that. It's it's, it's, I think it's a cultural shift more than it is sort of like a product led shift. Yeah,
makes sense. Nice. And I love the story of Joan. Use Piccadilly Circus, not for what it was that traditionally for with having loads of eyeballs on it, turn it on its head, use it to thank somebody and then share that with the world. Brilliant, lovely stuff. Yeah. Nice, nice. Everybody so far, I think, and certainly beforehand has talked about Facebook challenges. So we're gonna, we're going to move and we're going to give the people what they want. So Rachel, tell us about brain tumour research and the Facebook challenges that you ran last year?
Yeah, well, that's quite a lot of pressure. But hopefully, I'll kind of tell you about brain tumour research, how we kind of got into it, what our successes, our challenges, and kind of as if I was saying what potentially the future is, I'm going to talk about the success of digital fundraising from brain share research through Facebook challenges. So this innovation kind of, I know, it wasn't born in the pandemic, but it definitely grew in the pandemic. And as a way for charities to obviously raise funds while everyone was locked down and other departments within charities were able to do kind of their day job thinking more community fundraisers not been able to go out in the community. And we as a charity in our in our force, Facebook challenge. So we were very agile to see this, I guess, combing through the sector, and you know, looking at kind of other charities and going oh, should that be something that we should get on board with. And our first big one that we did was walking, so it was 10,000 steps a day in February, then since that we've done a jogging challenge, a cycling challenge, and currently a star jumping challenge. So you can kind of get see the theme in that they are kind of fitness challenges. And so far, we've raised in excess of 1.5 million. So it's a great achievement for our small but growing charity, I'd say, national charity. And along the way, we've obviously learned a few things, one of which is that these challenges, work really well to engage new supporters, as well as to re engage or engage existing ones. And so it is a great way to grow your database with new supporters. But interestingly, which I think was a surprise to us, we found that a lot of new supporters actually were drawn to the challenge rather than the cause first, which sounds a bit odd, but that's just the way it is. And actually, we found that even though they're, they were drawn to the challenge, a lot of them did have a connection to brain tumours, and they did have a connection to our cause. They just kind of never have heard of us before or, you know, just didn't support us for whatever reason. So this they weren't really well to kind of grabbed those people. Which obviously then you're bringing in a lot of lifetime value from a lot of these supporters. So it's not just about the income that comes from Facebook challenges. It's about you know, regular giving gifts in wells, fundraising, the future campaigning. So there's kind of a lot of value to these Facebook challenges outside of direct income. And, and through these four challenges, we are seeing lots of challenges, and having to really work together as a charity to figure out some of them. So I guess the first one with our 10k Steps campaign was as a charity, we were really overwhelmed at success, which is obviously an amazing problem to have. But it did involve literally every part of the charity kind of helping in some way or the other, which was obviously great. But it was also remote, you know, everyone had just turned to kind of remote working. And I think it was also the perfect storm at that time. So it obviously captured the imagination of people that were in lockdown. You know, it was kind of something to do when people didn't have anything to focus on. And I think 10,000 steps a day, I know, it's kind of like a fitness kind of goal for everybody. And it doesn't sound a lot, but it is a lot. And I think actually, it was quite fun to see that Facebook group and relationships build, as Anna said, it's an amazing place to just kind of build relationships with supporters, you know, other supporters to make friends. So yeah, a really positive place. But I think it was kind of funny to see how support was like, Oh, my gosh, this is like my legs or her a no, you know, and we were kind of there to build them up, motivate them, inspire them to keep going and obviously fundraise. But it's all about creating a great supporter experience within those Facebook groups and beyond.
And I guess the other challenge, or one of the other challenge, which I know pretty much everyone on this call will think about or know is digital is 24/7. And these Facebook groups are 24/7. So there is a lot of resources and time needed to manage them and manage them well. And so I guess that would be kind of one of the biggest things me that I think we weren't expecting when we first went into it. And so on the back of that as a charity, we've now invested in an internal team to which are focusing on virtual events, which obviously pre pandemic was not on, I don't think anyone's radar. And so obviously, it's it's great that we're expanding the team, and this is kind of another way we're bringing money in. And so they're focusing on planning, executing, evaluating, improving, and obviously innovating, hopefully, with a goal of raising more money in the future. And I think, you know, there was a lot of talk about, well, normal life's gonna resume, are people going to continue? And I would say they are, you know, I think there as a bar said, there's kind of increase competition with these things. So it is about, you know, how are you going to innovate? What are you going to do differently? How are you going to attract, you know, your supporter base, don't kind of worry about things out of you're kind of not control, but scope. And so that's kind of where I think the future of Facebook challenges is going it's kind of like, there will be more innovation. I think, you know, a couple of years ago, most people on this call probably even heard the Facebook challenge. So it's kind of like with innovation. It's so exciting because you don't actually know what's coming next. But everybody on this call and beyond our you know, it's within your realms to be an innovator and that's what I find exciting is that we could be talking or somebody could be listening now. And they could come up with something and innovation of the future. And we could be discussing it in like a year's time, which is pretty amazing. And so I guess just to wrap up, my key takeaways are Facebook challenges work well to bring in new supporters, but don't forget about your existing ones. And about lifetime value. running these challenges are more complicated and time consuming than you may think. They are obviously great. But I would say if you haven't done one yet and want to test it start small and be agile, and don't be afraid to test new things. And as kind of Anna was saying, test, learn and innovate. I think that's how we grow. Um, and yeah, well, your idea be the next one that we're talking about. You, Rachel,
I think we've already had the next idea that someone posted in the chat that they recently launched a crochet challenge as an alternative to fitness and it was very popular. That sounds pretty cool. With with, with mindfulness and everything. Rachel, just a quick question for you. Then off the back of that, obviously, you've talked about Facebook challenges. You've talked about getting them, getting them up trying starting small. You've seen some fantastic results. I'm just wondering if there's someone kind of listening now, is there any other organisations or other technology or anything I know give panel, there's been mentioned by a few people, potentially, that you worked with to get yours off the ground?
Yeah. So we do use gift panel, which is kind of like a fundraising platform that's worked well with Facebook, as we were an early adopter of that, and how many years ago now, but I think without using that platform, or one like it or others out there, it would be hard to kind of do what we do in terms of stewarding Facebook fundraisers just because I don't think the technology is there at the minute with Facebook. So using a an external platform, like gives panel really allowed us to kind of build a stewardship journey kind of for Facebook, which we wasn't able to do before. Okay.
Brilliant. Thank you very much, all of you for sharing that. I mean, we're coming already to the end of an hour. I don't mind staying around for two minutes longer if anyone, if everyone's okay with that. I'm sure we've all got meeting scheduled. That's the thing about virtual right, you kind of jump from one into the next one. I'm just going to have a look through the questions that we've been submitted. But James, you want to start off just looking at
yeah, I've got I've got one I've got she got Rachel, around Facebook challenges, the proliferation of those coming through everybody. Everybody seems to be jumping on board with that. Did you do much research beforehand into into how to sell and maybe settle upon a star jump? Sounds like a good one. It's a bit different to what I've heard before, you know, what kind of market research did you do before?
Yeah, I mean, I would love to say we did loads of loads of data to light loads of research. But unfortunately, we didn't we kind of just went on, you know, who do we know is our supporter base? What kind of things would they potentially like? And we just kind of whittled down a list. And then when Yeah, stardom sounds good. And then we've gone with it. And you know, there, if we have maybe the time and resource to kind of look at all our data points and look at demographics and things like that. Absolutely. You know, if you if you've got that at your fingertips, then obviously, it's good to do that. But we just didn't. And it seems to be working so far. But I think the biggest thing for us is as a brain tumour research charity, it's about making the challenges accessible. So that was kind of our number one thing, think about. Okay, great.
Michael, I've just got a question for you, if you don't mind going back to kind of the organisational and your digital first approach. And as you mentioned, the kind of the quick change that you guys have been through. I just wondered during that change, was there any mistakes that you wish that you hadn't made? I'm sure there's a few areas where if you've had that time again, you would have done things slightly differently. Is there anything that kind of stands out from you to that?
I think we were trying to solve so many things at the same time. And I think, actually, it's great if you can just kind of focus on on one thing. And so I think my biggest reflection is prioritisation like we if to me it felt like we had so many burning fires everywhere. And we had to like really focus in. And so I think where we are now it's really about Yeah, trying to be more prioritised than we weren't before. Yeah. Makes sense.
Anna, have you seen a different demographic of supporters? You mean there's been a massive increase, obviously and presumably that comes from higher numbers of donations but also a wider audience as well. That's different. Yeah,
we have Yeah, we have we have seen younger people donate to us, not as many as our kind of our, like, core kind of age group, which should be sort of like women aged kind of 35 to 55. That kind of group. And again, we definitely have seen younger people, more young people. And I, we assume that's because of the the kind of the Facebook ads that we've been doing and the, like, improved and streamlined donate pages. I can't say for sure. But I'm pretty sure that that was what it was. Yeah.
And I thought coming to you, I guess. Question is, how is it felt to be thrown into the limelight this past year? And have you noticed more of a focus on or an understanding of digital within the organisation and its hierarchy?
That is, that's a tricky question. Because Because my focus is on social. And so the Facebook challenges has been a been success internally, but they've actually been managed by a very small team of people compared to sort of the mass packs products that we would we would have our so it's a very, it's a very strange Tisbury. It's probably like, five people work on a Facebook challenge. Whereas something like detox is, you know, more than double that, and involves a lot more in terms of development work outside of the outside of the team. So I think what what's really been highlighted is sort of how, how lean some of these projects can be, and how little how little resource in these needs to be drained from across the organisation to capitalise on it. And that's true of a that that's, that's true of a lot of products. Actually, a lot of brands that we've tried is actually you can deliver them. More leanly, if you want to be if you want to be quick is that is possible, I think sometimes perhaps, what we're trying to do is you're trying to encourage people to think differently to kind of like shared some of their habitual needs from a from a product. Obviously, when you're talking about Facebook or social campaigns, you're not necessarily going to be driving people to a forum hosted on your website, there's, there's got a direct API to your CRM, some people have got that, and some people have it. And so trying to convince people of those pros and cons is, you know, it's perhaps been easier in these times, because we are trying to be responsive, we are trying to get stuff to get stuff out the door. And what I hope is that this period of time, is allowed people to, you know, across the sector, to just think a little bit to think a little bit a little bit differently. I think one of the biggest areas of shakeup will be will be mass participation in those existing mass packs, products. They're still out there, people are still working with him. But I know we've seen quite quite large variance between how things before post pandemic and during the pandemic, some of them worse, some of them, some, you know, almost retired now because of it. So, I think it's been really, it's been, it's been interesting, but I think more importantly, is given everyone an opportunity to take stock of how we're used to work and how we can work and how you know, how that will look. This time next year, hopefully.
Yeah, there's definitely feels like there's been a bigger, big shift in that area. KENNETH can attest to this with his role at London Marathon, you know, bringing in virtual over the last couple of years and the way that we changed the way that we're talking changes in ways that you weren't Michael, have a question for you. Harriet Millwood always, you know, concerned about the staff, she thinks about other people nice person, she is wondering about your shift towards the kind of home working more removing the office, how are you looking after everybody focusing on well being supporting people internally through through comms etc?
Yeah, that's really, really important question. So one of the things we've just introduced our wellbeing days, so we've we've introduced two of these each year for for staff to take whenever they want. And it doesn't have to be when they hit a crisis point. Or it can just be if you want to just do something to focus on your well being. You can take that day whenever you like. So that's something we've just introduced. And we've had really positive feedback on that. And yeah, and I think also, we attacked conference in Manchester a couple of weeks ago, we had a really good discussion about well being and I asked, I was kind of hosting the q&a at the conference and I asked each of our leaders to talk about something that they've been doing to really focus on their well being as a way of sort of setting an example that it's it's okay to take time out. And it's okay to be flexible. And we all have good days and bad days. And so yeah, I think by showing kind of more open leadership, we can encourage people to take. I think it's about sort of like taking a little ownership over yourself. And I was giving you the space to do that, and to support you where we need to. But that's kind of that's gone down really well, that the the well being days,
start jumps and crashing. That's my advice.
Sounds like a great organisation. Look, I'm conscious of time because we've gone over allocated time, but we'll just kind of sum it up with with with one last question for all of you. If you could just give a quick prompt answer, I guess, you know, we're here talking about leadership. We're here talking about digital innovation. We've heard some fantastic examples of what's gone on over the last 20 months and beyond. But really just a question to all of you is what what excites you about the future? What would you love to be sitting here in 12 months, 18 months time and talking about the success? Rachel, I'm going to come to you is there something that excites you about the future?
I think we kind of said it in that what excites me is that literally anything is possible, especially with digital. And so yeah, that's what kind of keeps me going and then gets me excited about innovation.
Yeah, good answer, Michael.
Well, I just think everything in our lives has already been opened it doesn't it not always in such a great way. But I do genuinely think that digital has the potential to change all of our lives for the better. And we've embraced it more so than ever before in history. So I'm really hoping that the next 12 months, we can continue to do that.
Brilliant. And I thought I'll just continue.
Yeah, I think I think you know, what we've learned through Facebook fundraising, which seems to be all anyone's talking about is that is that we can start looking at social audiences as fundraisers rather than launch ads as well. And, and because what we've been doing is sort of segmenting them. So they're social until they convert an ad and then they're just fundraisers. And I think that, you know, in a year's time, I want I really want to want to be talking about how fundraising and social is properly integrated. And you know, not not fundraising not social, not just being the sort of pond that we fishing.
Nice. Like that. An analyst but not least,
I'm excited for Yeah, for us to get kind of to build our movement, if more because we've already had like a lot of success. And I'm excited to see what we can do more in the future. Try and change some more laws disrupts more. Well, for this,
yes, we definitely offer that is brilliant. Well, look, thank you, all of you for bringing your best versions of yourself. I mean, some really fantastic work. Thank you for all of your efforts. And for everyone who's here and listened and stuck with us for the last hour and a little bit. Um, hopefully you can go away with some really interesting tips. James, any final thoughts before we wrap it up?
No, as if any of our members of the audience or the panel or one of our three subscribers to our show, they'll know that we get really excited about talking to experts. So it's been fantastic to hear from you guys. Thank you very much.
Brilliant. Yeah, we should give a little plug isn't it if you haven't listened to it yet? Check out the do more good podcast available on all good podcast platforms there. I've got that one in. Okay, we'll look we'll we'll wrap it up now. Thank you everyone for attending. And yeah, take care of yourselves and we're going to do that really awkward zoom wave.
Thanks a lot guys.